The kindness of strangers: I pulled over in hysterics – then a passing driver saved me from the spider
The kindness of strangers: I pulled over in hysterics – then a passing driver saved me from the spider
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After the huntsman raced across my windscreen, I had an arachnophobic meltdown on the side of the road. Then a well-coiffed vision in a Volvo rolled up her sleeves. Read more in the kindness of strangers series. When I was about 19 or 20 I was driving through a genteel, leafy suburb on the north shore of Sydney when that most menacing of all Australian wildlife – a huntsman spider – raced across my windscreen. On the inside.
My arachnophobia is so intense that I would have vastly preferred it if a great white shark had crashed through the window. I’m surprised I didn’t lose the will to live immediately and simply died on the spot. Instead, I screamed, wrenched the wheel left and ran up the gutter, before hurling myself into a gasping panic on the kerb. I then proceeded to have what could only be described as a very loud, very visible breakdown.
A few passersby asked if I was OK. I spluttered out the story and one by one they shrugged. “Oh you’ll be fine.” “Just get in, stop being so ridiculous,” jeered one. I would not be fine. I would not “just get in”. My only options were to walk home or accept this patch of grass as my new residence until I could arrange to have the car burned to the ground.
Just as I was wondering, between sobs, exactly what sort of company I’d need to contact for “car burning services”, a woman pulled up in a pristine white Volvo. She had a perfectly coiffed blond bob and neat jeans and two young kids in the backseat who were no more than six years old. She got out of the car and asked me what was wrong, and I howled out the story, fully expecting her to recoil with a terror that matched mine and speed off in a cloud of Happy by Clinique.
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